Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Timsup2nothin]

And yet what? The policy doesn't move because the political system is controlled by those rich people, not because people don't want it to happen.

Actually, the political system is controlled by those rich people plus the people who are not rich and yet still disagree with you for <reasons>. Those aren't necessarily good reasons. In fact I mostly think they are terrible reasons. But the fact that you and I agree on what would be a good thing to do doesn't change the problem that we disagree on recognizing that those people and their faulty reasoning do exist. I know they do, you seem more inclined to think the rich are somehow pulling a magic trick.

Sorry, I meant to write "[waves hand at the world]" in a pseudo-pessimistic way.

I mean, nearly everyone I know hates Daylight Savings Time, at yet ... [waves vaguely]. Sometimes it feels like we don't actually live in democracies. That said, an incredible portion of politicians here (Canada) actually campaign on not raising taxes for the rich, and a reasonable portion of them win elections. There's more than just 'the rich' that prevents people for voting against higher taxes for the rich. There are just minds that need to be changed.

And this handwaving is what comes out of it. It does seem very hard to believe that democratic process could result in idiotic policies that hurt the vast majority, and yet it not only does, but far more often than not it has...which is just short of saying that it always has...and it seems likely that it almost always will.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Hrothbern you forgot to include the impact of producing steel dossiers for the past two years. It's a British export into the American market that had a huge ripple effect.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

the people who are not rich and yet still disagree with you for <reasons>.

You mean bootlickers? The people who will never be rich but still believe that if they work hard enough, then maybe one day they will make it?

 

[Hrothbern]

@Hrothbern you forgot to include the impact of producing steel dossiers for the past two years. It's a British export into the American market that had a huge ripple effect.

But not enough

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You mean bootlickers? The people who will never be rich but still believe that if they work hard enough, then maybe one day they will make it?

That certainly accounts for some of them. I suspect that "I would rather my employer paid me than paid taxes" accounts for a whole lot more of them. I get far more irritated with that than the "but I'll be rich myself someday" belief. The insidiousness of the "job creators" theory turns my stomach. These people are supposed to believe capitalism works, and all sorts of theories about 'market driven,' so how do they just not grasp that their job is created by the market, not by some clown that is calling himself their boss?

 

[El_Machinae]

You mean bootlickers? The people who will never be rich but still believe that if they work hard enough, then maybe one day they will make it?

There is less value in using contemptuous phrasing than in figuring out what phrasing would be effective

Some people literally view it as a technique of improving tomorrow, at the expense of giving up stuff today

 

[Hrothbern]

Several European countries have nationalized oil, steel, and health care industries successfully. Well, steel falls more under the EEC, but nevertheless.

Also based on that maturing write up on steel industry.

I think Steel is not a good industry to nationalise. It needs high capital to be effecient and you have to keep that up during competitive maturing including pushing out jobs all the time.
That is a really bad cocktail for managing it under responsibility of politicians.
Capital so big you need it from federal level in the US, but the benefits going to that one, two, three states where that steel industry is located, including the whole cluster around it. Politics can be very ineffecient.

There are many other sectors in industry and service economy that can be nationalised without much risks from side effects from politics.
Not only the public roads and motorways.
Renewable energy: the solar fields, the windmill fields, the grid. It needs hardly the kind of management you need in a changing competitive environment. Just project management and capital.
What happens now. I should perhaps have made a post on that in Global warming strikes ahgain, is that the big fossil multinationals wait until governments did do to little and come then too rescue (they have everything prepared for that).
Governments will be willing enough to give all kinds of "guarantees" (to get prices down) and they just transition us and themselves in the green technology. Exchanging a business difficult to run by the state to a business the state could easily run.

That NHS. Fully nationalised would be ineffective imo. Ineffective in terms of being able to drive a steady rate of improvements to keep up your productivity & feature scope..
Hybrids I think are better where you inject competitive effects at essential points to the hybrid by "sacrificing" a small part to private within boundaries of regulations.

 

[El_Machinae]

One place the United States government has quite excelled is being the first customer. They didn't so much nationalize computer research, they bought vast quantities of transistors from the first groups that were able to develop them according to spec. And then put them in spaceships . The human genome, purchased through a series of Grants. Etc.

 

[metalhead]

In 1958 the industry had 700,000 workers; today maybe 80,000.

So how would a nationalized industry have changed the scenario?

Could have eased the decline. Instead of mass plant shutdowns and the hollowing out of entire communities virtually overnight, plant shutdowns could have been managed and communities and workers better protected. Surely with some planning, the pain would have been far less.

Oh but that's right, "central planning" sounds Soviet, and so we can't do that or we're Communists. Best to just cut off people's economic livelihood and leave them to rot instead.

I think Steel is not a good industry to nationalise. It needs high capital to be effecient and you have to keep that up during competitive maturing including pushing out jobs all the time.

That's fair, but remember we're talking about a scenario where demand for steel was cut by 1/3rd overnight. The industry was going through a sudden, enormous contraction. Such a scenario to me screams for nationalization, even if only temporary, to manage that shock and take care of the workers.

 

[rah]

Sounds like you would have favored nationalizing the coal industry.

 

[Lexicus]

Actually, the political system is controlled by those rich people plus the people who are not rich and yet still disagree with you for <reasons>. Those aren't necessarily good reasons. In fact I mostly think they are terrible reasons. But the fact that you and I agree on what would be a good thing to do doesn't change the problem that we disagree on recognizing that those people and their faulty reasoning do exist. I know they do, you seem more inclined to think the rich are somehow pulling a magic trick.

There's nothing magic about public relations.

And this handwaving is what comes out of it. It does seem very hard to believe that democratic process could result in idiotic policies that hurt the vast majority, and yet it not only does, but far more often than not it has...which is just short of saying that it always has...and it seems likely that it almost always will.

It's easy to believe the "democratic process" can result in crap policies because it isn't really a democratic process, it's a ritual trapping of democracy that we confuse for genuine democracy, which actually requires people to have some measure of control over the things that affect their lives. We in effect have a tiny iceberg of political democracy in a vast sea of barbarous autocracy and traditional rule by arbitrary authority, and we pretend that the significance of the iceberg is far greater than it actually is.

And the iceberg is melting - two out of the last five elections, the guy who won got fewer votes than his opponent! There is literally nothing democratic about that.

 

[AmazonQueen]

That certainly accounts for some of them. I suspect that "I would rather my employer paid me than paid taxes" accounts for a whole lot more of them. I get far more irritated with that than the "but I'll be rich myself someday" belief. The insidiousness of the "job creators" theory turns my stomach. These people are supposed to believe capitalism works, and all sorts of theories about 'market driven,' so how do they just not grasp that their job is created by the market, not by some clown that is calling himself their boss?

I suspect my Uncle Fred would've voted Republican. He used to vote Tory because they kept taxes down and Communist in union elections (even after they got caught out in a ballot-rigging scandal) because they got him good pay rises.

 

[civvver]

I'm seeing more and more ads about how to "invest in real estate" again. I'd call that a warning sign, generally speaking. The speculators are getting heavy on those trying to live.

Any time you see those ads you've already missed the boat. Remember how many gold ads we saw after gold peaked? The time to get into real estate was 7-8 years ago, not now. I think it's going to go up a little more still, but you don't buy high and it's pretty high right now.

 

[civvver]

From Huffington Post today:

https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeover-college/

All about the cost of college degrees.

That's pretty gross. However on the plus side I had no idea about GA tech's online computer science masters. I might actually be interested in such a program, considering the price.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Could have eased the decline. Instead of mass plant shutdowns and the hollowing out of entire communities virtually overnight, plant shutdowns could have been managed and communities and workers better protected. Surely with some planning, the pain would have been far less.

Oh but that's right, "central planning" sounds Soviet, and so we can't do that or we're Communists. Best to just cut off people's economic livelihood and leave them to rot instead.

Central planning does have a very bad rap from anyone old enough to remember its failures in the USSR and China. One major problem with it is that it takes expertise to plan things well and government Bureaucrats are ill equipped. They do not have the expertise to understand how industries work and how regional variation calls for regional differences especially across a large nation. Most governments don't know how to plan the simple stuff, let alone biog complex sectors of an economy.

 

[Hrothbern]

That's fair, but remember we're talking about a scenario where demand for steel was cut by 1/3rd overnight. The industry was going through a sudden, enormous contraction. Such a scenario to me screams for nationalization, even if only temporary, to manage that shock and take care of the workers.

Such sudden contractions are a reason why you want industries and related service companies in clusters. Clusters where other companies, early in the life cycle of their products, are growing all the time, needing workers.
In such a sudden contraction scenario you can as government pump capital in those other companies, that get a growth boost from economy of scale effects. A growth and productivity boost for your economy in sectors that would grow anyway. That cheap capital (cheap interest, grants) in return for jobs guaranteed for a say 5 year period. The jobs created mostly the higher value jobs (high fixed capital per employee).
For sure not all that government money lands 100% correctly at the intended purpose, but that "wasted" money is still a lot less than the damage for the government in terms of missed taxes and social security cost (still purely common sense and not imo related to left-right thinking, though in the US that could be seen differently).

Unfortunately many traditional heavy industry sectors are not in the new clusters.

Important is that you use, allocate, government money all the time to the spots where it delivers the combi of jobs and productivity increase in sectors with a future.
You want your new growing sectors to generate high value jobs. Against the time these sectors mature the number and value of the same jobs will decrease.
(A big part of our chemical industry in NL, not of the Rotterdam cluster that grew itself, is typical from such government interventions during the 70ies to 90ies. The biggest intervention when all our coal mines were closed. All those actions were flanked by massive re-education programs. You just need skilled workers in newer sectors. From coal to chemical industry is a leap. And it pays back !)

 

[Lexicus]

Central planning does have a very bad rap from anyone old enough to remember its failures in the USSR and China.

I suppose you're too young to remember its successes in the Depression and the Second World War

 

[rah]

Were any of us alive then?

 

[Lexicus]

Were any of us alive then?

No but there's this awesome thing called "the historical record" that we can use to learn about things that happened before we were born.

 

[rah]

Yes I know, but you asked

I suppose you're too young to remember its successes in the Depression and the Second World War

So I was just suggesting that we were ALL too young to remember. You must learn to be more specific.